Group supervision will feature significantly in fourth test of EU’s planned new regime. Results expected in November Radical reform of Europe’s insurance solvency rules remains on a tight timetable with the EU’s chief financial regulator having to scotch rumours that the European Commission planned a new proposal for the Solvency II project.

Tokyo, February 10 (Global Risk Regulator) – Financial regulators this weekend stressed the importance of the controversial Basel II bank safety rules in providing resilient supervision in the wake of the turmoil that’s hit global financial markets in the last six months.

AMSTERDAM, February 6 (Global Risk Regulator) – Stock market regulators will soon propose changes to their code of conduct for credit rating agencies. The changes aim to improve the information the firms provide and to resolve the conflict-of-interest charges against them generated by the subprime crisis.

AMSTERDAM, February 4 (Global Risk Regulator) – The tempo of efforts to judge the need for regulatory reform in the wake of the subprime crisis is quickening as the world’s stock market regulators and Group of Seven finance ministers discuss their responses at separate meetings this week.

LONDON, January 29 (Global Risk Regulator) – Largely as expected, the leaders of Europe’s big four economies today agreed a wish-list of actions to improve the transparency of global financial activities. They met in London to review the credit crunch that’s hit key parts of the global financial markets since the summer as a result of the meltdown in the US market for subprime mortgage lending.

The pace of various regulatory policy reviews is speeding up, with key meetings scheduled for the spring. But consensus is elusive By David Keefe

A back-to-first-principles overhaul of bank capital is advocated in an FSA paper. But this is at odds with latest EU proposals By Melvyn Westlake

Proposals for a new large exposure regime are worrying many bankers and could lead to unintended consequences By Melvyn Westlake

LONDON – Regulators are promising to monitor closely the extent that banks’ capital requirements vary across the economic cycle following the adoption of the Basel II risk-based capital rules by the majority of major banks in the EU, and elsewhere, from the start of 2008. Analytical research suggests that capital requirements could rise and fall sharply with economic booms and busts, and this could have the affect of exacerbating the cycle.

BRUSSELS – The executive arm of the European Union has asked the EU’s banking and securities market regulators whether present rules on trading commodity derivatives give rise to possible market failure by hampering the aims of market and prudential regulation.